Tutshill Tornadoes - Lost At Sea
by Emiliya Wolfe
Summary: Season 5's QLFC Tutshill Tornados encounter a storm at sea. With only a dinghy and a few spells to survive, how does the crew make it to a deserted island, and more importantly, civilisation? Prompts: use 3 spells: ventus-strong blast of wind, verdimillious- sends green sparks from wand, engorgio- makes stuff bigger. Co-written by The Kawaii Neko and beta-ed by Princessss and paien


**Written for the QLFC daily prophet team challenge. Co-author: Michal (The Kawaii Neko).**

* * *

Captain Ruby surveyed her newest crew. They were a ragtag bunch of witches, most of them never having even served on a ship before they boarded the Gazelle to New York. Still, these were the only survivors of the shipwreck - that she knew of - and she'd have to make do. At least their little dinghy had a sail attached to it. She had been in worse situations.

Barely.

There was the passenger, Aya. Ruby had only spoken to her once or twice, but it seemed that she was some sort of weather witch looking for a career change. The young Ministry worker had spent the better part of her voyage quizzing their boatswain, Michal, on the running of the ship.

Michal was probably the most useful person out of all of those aboard the dinghy, including Ruby herself. Her knowledge of just about anything had earned her the title of Jack-of-all-trades. As bosun, Michal had to check that the ship was running smoothly and was successful. Of course, none of them had factored in the storm.

The ship's cook, Paige, had her whisk on her at all times, maintaining that she never knew when she'd need to beat an egg or two. But that wasn't going to be very useful against the churning waters of the ocean.

She knew little about the three gunnery chiefs she had just taken on, although they had proved to work cohesively when they had met trouble at sea four days ago. Jen, Ella and Nihara had bellowed orders and fired cannons in complete synchronisation. Hopefully, their teamwork would carry over onto doing what they could to escape this god-forsaken ocean.

Ruby's eyes landed on the last bedraggled person on their boat. Her helmsman, Emiliya, had also made her way onto Captain Ruby's dinghy. Ruby was glad that they had another person with a sense of direction - after all, who knew what could happen at sea? If Ruby was claimed by Davy Jones, then Emiliya would be able to sail them to land.

Still, Ruby desperately wished that her first mate, Quiche, had survived the storm. She would have known exactly how to alleviate Ruby's second-guessing. Unfortunately, she had been lost with the ship. She had stayed aboard when it became clear that there were still passengers aboard, cutting the ropes tethering the small boat so that the others could make their escape without feeling guilty.

Ruby peered out into the sea, looking for land, but there was sea in every direction. She turned to Emiliya.

"You spot any land?" she asked. Emiliya also squinted into the distance, looking. She was silent for a long moment before pointing and shouting,

"Land ho!"

Ruby followed Emiliya's finger and saw that there was, in fact, a tiny island, around a couple of miles away. Ruby frowned.

"Do we have enough power to make it there?" she asked Michal, who was walking around, checking on holes and rips in the boat. Michal shook her head sadly.

"'Fraid not, Captain."

"Well then," Ruby huffed, pulling out her wand. "We'll need to use some sort of spell. But what one?"

The ship's lone passenger, Aya, came forward.

"I can do a pretty good wind spell, Captain, if I do say so myself. I'm a weather witch after all."

Seeing no other option, Ruby waved at hand at Aya.

"Sure, go ahead."

Aya walked to the back of the boat, pulled out her wand, and said in a powerful voice,

" _Ventus!_ "

A strong blast of wind came shooting out of the tip of Aya's wand, propelling them forwards.

The rest of the crew all scrambled for a handhold. Ruby herself clung on to the mast to prevent herself from being blown out to sea. After making some careful adjustments to the sail, they glided onto the shore and were able to disembark straight onto the sand.

"That's going to take a hell of a lot of manpower to get back into the sea," Michal remarked, noting that the tide was going out.

"Maybe, but we'll worry about that tomorrow," Ruby replied matter-of-factly. "Right now, our priority is to find food, water, and whatever else is available on this forsaken isle."

Jen shaded her eyes from the sun, scanning the island for anything of use.

"There!" she exclaimed suddenly, pointing towards a small copse of trees.

The motley band of witches raced towards the shade, making various sounds of relief when they realised that coconuts were in season.

"Jen, Nihara, Ella," Ruby barked out instinctively.

Immediately the three gunners swarmed the trees, climbing the tough bark as easily as the ropes of a ship. Ella gave one coconut a sharp tug, and the rest of the crew moved hastily out of the way as it dropped to the floor with a thud, cracking into four. The milk within splashed out, absorbed into the ground within seconds.

"You're supposed to catch them!" Ella cried out indignantly. "Here, another one's coming down!"

This time, Ruby was able to catch the coconut, grunting under the weight. She struggled to keep it between her fingers, before gently putting it on the ground some way off. Soon, they had a collection of eight coconuts - all the fruit the island had to offer.

"Now what?" Emiliya asked, eyeing the coconuts guardedly.

"That's easy," Aya replied. "Eight coconuts, eight of us. That's one each. We might have to ration it out though; who knows how long it'll take us to reach civilisation?"

"Oh don't be so melodramatic!" Paige interrupted joyfully. "What do you take us for, savages? We'll do what I always do when the ship is blown off course."

With a flourish, Paige pointed her wand at one of the coconuts.

" _Engorgio!_ " she intoned.

The coconut grew five times in size. Jen, who was standing nearest to the pile, watched the fruit warily as it swayed from side to side before rolling down the beach. It easily rivalled the biggest of boulders. Cautiously, she took several steps back - out of the line of fire.

"We might want to secure the rest before they roll down the beach and break our boat," she suggested, watching the coconut reach the water and sink into its icy depths.

* * *

"Just do your best, we'll do the rest,

And learn until our brains all roooot!"

Emiliya and Ella were on their feet, swaying as they roared out the last lines of the Hogwarts school song. Across the pile of coconut shells, Jen finished conducting the rhythm with her wand raised in the air, taking several short bows to the applause of Nihara and Aya.

"Call that a song?" Michal teased, jumping to her feet and doing a small jig. "Wait until you hear what we used to sing at Ilvermorny!"

"Michal…" Ruby warned, but she was smiling as she did so. "I think that's enough songs for now. We really need to find a way off this island… before the sugar in the fruit addles with our brains."

She gave a pointed look at Emiliya and Jen, who had collapsed to the floor, drinking from the shells Paige had washed and filled with coconut milk.

"We might have needed our helmsman to chart a course," Ruby continued. "Wasn't that the point of waiting for nightfall anyway?"

"Sorry," Paige shrugged apologetically. "I forgot to warn them. Usually Emiliya doesn't drink anything but water on the ship, and we've always got plenty of that. The situation can be easily remedied with an _Aguamenti_ charm."

"You can't cast _Aguamenti_ at open sea," Nihara piped up, joining in the conversation. "It draws water from the surroundings, so we'd end up with seawater each time."

"Great," Ruby muttered under her breath. "Just great."

"What was that, Cap?"

"Nothing," Ruby rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. "So, does anyone have any ideas?"

"I suppose we could try sending smoke signals," Aya suggested. "But we'd need a fire for that, and we don't have anything to burn."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong!" Ella interjected, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. "You've just given me an idea. And it would help the others work off that sugar rush, because it involves a lot of manual labour."

"So does that mean I can have some extra coconut?" Michal asked, eyeing the succulent fruit.

"Go ahead," Paige waved a hand towards the pile of bite-sized chunks she had managed to break off. "I wouldn't want my own manual labour to go to waste."

"Excellent," Michal replied. "I'm starving."

Under Ella's direction, the crew set off searching the island for driftwood, occasionally bringing the pieces back to Paige, who would enlarge them and pass them over to Ruby, who secured them against the coconut trees.

Just as dawn broke, the crew collapsed to the ground, wiping their brows with torn shirts. Ruby surveyed their work. A pile of wood was carefully balanced between the five coconut trees, which Michal had cleverly lashed together using their most flexible branches.

"I think that's everything," Aya panted, curling into a foetal position. "Merlin, I'm not used to this kind of work."

"It's good training if you want to be a part of the crew," Paige remarked. "It builds up a lot of the muscles you would need if you're serious about working on a ship."

Aya merely groaned in response.

Ruby nimbly climbed to the top of their bonfire, shading her eyes as she looked out to sea.

"Quickly now, the tide's coming in! Jen, you send off the sparks into the wood - the green should incorporate itself into the flames so our rescuers will know the fire's of magical origin. The rest of you, follow me! Quickly now!"

"Aye, aye, Cap!" Jen clambered over the driftwood, occasionally shoving her wand into a crack and shouting " _Vermidillious!"._

The rest of the witches got to their feet as best as they could, running haphazardly across the beach, sand kicking up into their faces as the wind picked up.

"The wind's blowing westwards!" Emiliya cried. "We should set sail in that direction - any nearby boat will follow the smoke and find us."

Ruby rolled her eyes. That was the kind of thinking she had needed twelve hours ago, when they could have set sail under the stars in the cool night. Instead, they were sweltering under the heat of the rising sun.

"Heave!" she instructed, and the crew set their backs into the sides of the dinghy.

Eventually, they were able to get the boat going and it easily slid off into the water. Nihara and Ella leant down to paddle with their hands to pick up movement, whilst the rest of them climbed over the sides, near rolling over each other as they fell into the boat.

Jen came running down the shore, a column of flame flickering behind her. She waded waist-deep into the water before the rest of the crew were able to hoist her aboard.

"Aya!" Ruby shouted.

"Aye, aye, Captain!" Aya slipped into sailor's dialect as she pointed back towards the island. " _Ventus!"_

The boat started sailing again, going westward, per Emiliya's instructions.

A few hours later, there was still no sign of another ship. The crew lay flat on their backs, trying to make as little effort as possible to reduce their thirst, when suddenly Neha, looking out to sea, let out a shout.

"There's a ship!"

She got up immediately, waving her arms and calling out.

"Hey, wait a second—" she faltered as the crew's little dinghy sailed closer to the other ship. "That's our old boat!"

"I don't believe it!" Ruby said, squinting towards the silhouette getting closer and closer. "Yeah, it is! And look! It's Quiche!"

Everyone on the dinghy let out a cheer and sailed onwards to their original ship.

It only took a few minutes for Quiche to let down the rigging, allowing them to clamber aboard.

"Welcome back, Captain!" she greeted Ruby, clapping her on the back.

Ruby looked at her first mate in wonder. "How… how is it that you're here? I saw the damage to the ship; there was no way we could have survived the storm."

"Now that's a funny story," Quiche replied, motioning for the water skeins. "We were ready to embrace death, when another ship heard our cries for help. It was nothing short of a miracle, really - I don't know how they managed to hear anything over the storm.

"Anyway, with the help of a second ship's crew and spare supplies, we managed to patch the ol' girl up well enough to sail back to Ireland. A few repairs later, we set out to complete the original voyage, but I noticed the smoke and there you have it."

"I don't believe it," Ruby said, shaking her head. "Well I'm not going to complain, that's for sure! I think some celebration is in order, after this. Michal, what was that song you were going to sing us? Quiche, warn the passengers, we're breaking out the rum!"


End file.
